Waiting for Leonardo
by Ria-angelo
Summary: A fan risks her life to find her heroes...and finds herself.
1. Waiting for Leonardo The Disclaimer

**Waiting for Leonardo**   
by Ria-angelo 

Rated: PG 

The Disclaimer (February 1999) 

You're about to meet **Meg Leigh Silko**, narrator and heroine of this semi-fanfic. If you know me, as Ria-angelo or Ria or Maria or even 'that tall English major chick who runs track', you can probably guess that Silko's a lot like me - someone I could see myself becoming in a couple of years. 

Meg's story developed during December 1998, then got finished in January of 1999. I want to extend deep thanks to my friends and reviewers whose suggestions and support got this piece where it is: Dee, Donna, (Donna's webpage!), Kim, and Wendy, (Wendy's webpage!). 

Several of the characters in here are based on friends of mine whose permission was obtained for use of their names and likenesses. They're really cool. :) 

Some characters/situations herein described belong to one dimension or another of the mighty Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles universe, property of ** Mirage Studios ** (see disclaimer on my ** web page**.) 

Other than the above, all characters, situations, scenes, events, potholes, cliches, and deli sandwiches are imaginary, and any similarities to actual matter is coincidental. 

Finally, I offer an apology to my inner child and all my clapping readers' for leaving out the part where Tink wakes up. I hope the other fanfics on this site, or linked to it, make up for that!! 

Thanks for stopping in, hope you enjoy the tale!! 


	2. Waiting for Leonardo Chapter 1

**Waiting for Leonardo -- Chapter 1**   
story © 1999 Ria-angelo 

* * *

** December 7th, 2001   
7pm**

"It's a living..." 

The familiar half-laugh, half-sigh eases out of the phone from a half-thousand miles away, and it's like Dave is right here in my living room. "C'mon, Meg, tell me the truth. You're NOT just doing this cause of the Turtles?" 

"Gah," I wince, then go sarcastic on the recovery. "Sure, Dave, I came all the way to the City and got a job wading through half the spit in Manhattan all day, just cause I think I might catch a glimpse of some comic book mutants who call themselves Ninja Turtles." 

Dave waits for me to take a breath and launches a line back at me. "That's the reason you told me you snuck out of your Mom's house at 4am when you were thirteen. As I remember it, you took a two-day-old bike 75 miles to Haydenville, Massachusetts - where you thought Mirage Studios was." 

He's got a point, I think. "Dave. Emphasis on the fact that I was thirteen at the time." 

"All right, all right. I believe you. So long as you're writing that novel when you're off-duty..." 

"Of course I'm still writing it. There's gotta be a reason for me to come back to the apartment, with all that fantastic life going on outside my window. And I can't get rid of the apartment, what else would I spend my paycheck on?" 

"With your job?" Dave sniggered. "Lots of expensive perfume." 

"So that's what the Emeraude was for." 

"Just call me your little birthday elf!" 

The joke behind the bottle of green perfume hadn't been lost on me. If he hadn't also sent the signed back issue of Manbat with my birthday package, I might have been upset. "Actually, Dave, the tunnels aren't so bad this time of year. A lot of it's frozen, and there's this one section where it's like a mini-waterfall of ice. Reminds me of a fanfic one of my friends wrote back in - " 

"Meg?" 

"Yeah?" 

"You're talking about sewer ice." 

"Yeah..." I shrug, lean back against the kitchenette counter. "Don't worry, I get out enough to know the stuff at Rockefeller Center's a lot less colorful." 

I hear Dave scratching his beard, the wiry hairs sounding like static across the line. "Listen, I've got a few days' vacation next month. You got floor room?" 

"You askin' for guided tours of the town?" 

"I'm on my knees." 

I decide to believe him. "It's a deal. You wanna come babysit me, I'll get you your exercise." 

"Hoo boy." 

"Bring your 'blades." 

We hang up a bit later and I frown at the laptop screen in front of me. 

Eric whistled silky waves in from the seaweed-clogged beach. 

"So what?" I ask the screen. 

My fingers betray me. 

Tense, he caught sight of a rounded shadow approaching from behind. "Michaelangelo?" 

"Gah." 

My fingers hit shift+control+home, highlighting the line. "Delete," I chirp. 

Time to get out, get some inspiration. It isn't fair that, as my fanfic-writing friend had said, all my creativity descended into the sewers of New York a few years ago and hasn't come out since. Maybe Dave's right and I should get a new job...one that has nothing to do with heroes or shells or fighting - 

Damn! My job!! 

I start grabbing parts of my DPW uniform from around the apartment. There's about fourteen pieces to the thing, half of it in the bathroom, still drip-drying from the morning. Keeping an eye on the wind-up alarm clock on the back of the toilet, I strip out of my running clothes, shower, and get into the first layers - long underwear, turtleneck, wool pants, knee-high nylons and heavy socks. I look like I'm going for a hike in the Himalayas... The rest of the layers, including our thick fluorescent waterproof overalls, will wait in my pack until I get to our station. 

I take the subway, my equipment and ID in the backpack I've worn since high school. Most nights I use the ride to think about the story I'd worked on after my run that day, but not this evening. Dave's question is rattling at me. No, I tell myself. The Turtles aren't the only reason I got a job working underground. I've been in love with Manhattan's underground world long before I saw the green guys' cartoon - at least since watching the Children in the TV show Beauty and the Beast back in grade school. And I do need a steady job to keep the bills at bay while my rejection slips pile up - one that isn't too repetitive, and still leaves 'scope for the imagination'. 

Dave just doesn't understand all that - he's still at his parents' house so far, working at the Greater Schenectady Performing Arts Center as lighting staff. It's an early break for him, half a year out of college, but we both know Broadway is a must-see for when he comes down for the promised tour. 

Besides, I continue as a grocery-laden white kid takes the seat next to me, if you were just doing this to chase Turtles, you would have given up a long time ago. Manhattan DPW crew isn't the easiest job in the world to hold onto, though the fight to keep it appeals to my feminist side. 

The guys who hired me couldn't believe I wanted to go all the way down. Most of the new guys, they'd said, are happy just guarding the open manhole and the topside equipment on the street. "How else am I gonna get to see any action?" I'd asked. And kept asking, and insisting, once my six weeks of training were up, until they gave in and let me on the deep tunnel crew 'for a trial'. 

I tell them all I have a boyfriend upstate, to keep them off my back, but my coworkers are pretty much convinced I'm gay. The only other woman I've met on deep crew was a 40-year-old Hispanic woman working up on 68th Street on the big gas line bypass in September, and she had been gay. That was the only thing really going for me, that I'd turned down her overtures just as neatly as I had my coworkers'. Maybe Dave will let me talk him into playing 'boyfriend' instead of 'honorary brother' for a few hours while he's here, just to show them? I think, showing my pass and climbing aboard the off-duty number 6 train. Henry's the only one there to join me - we're a bit late. 

The operator is Ned, an older black man who never minds talking with me about the tunnels. He surfs me and my fellow workers from the Brooklyn Bridge stop and on to the work site every night. I'll miss him when we're done under Battery Park City. 

He takes us real slow, as usual, through the curve of the abandoned landmark City Hall station, he and I admiring the arches in the soft gaslights' glow. 

"Don't forget, it's folks like us built this place. Them suits and tourists admire, but we know how to do it again." 

Henry snorts. I smile at Ned. 

"Thanks," I say a few minutes later, as the doors open to let us into the halogen and fluorescent-cone world of Station 1174 F. 

The rest of the team's already here, suited up for the night's shift. I see Bruce, working relief for the afternoon shift, looking nervous where he sits by the generator. "Hey, buddy," I say, strolling over as I snap the straps of my coat around the oversized wool sweater I wear. "What's up, tonight? Looks like you got the jitters." 

"Can't light up til shift's over," he mutters, tapping the Camels in his left breast pocket. His other hand's drumming an agitated pattern on the generator box. "Not until they're done checking for leaks. Looks like minor damage so far, but... Two more hours and I'm outta here!" 

"Damage?" I echo, listening for the hiss of leaks over the muffled percussion of his fingers. 

"Tunnel collapsed, some sort of wreck in the subway under the WFC." 

"Yikes - the World Financial Center?" That's right over our heads... "How bad?" 

"Just a lot of smoke and some building damage. Most of the blast effect went down here." 

I shudder, looking up, breathing a quick prayer of thanks that no one was hurt. Chase it with a prayer that the tunnels, weakened, won't collapse on our heads. I think briefly of my mother. I've never told her how risky this job I've got is... 

Jim's flashlight kicks on suddenly, sweeping the eight of us in the station. "Let's move. Silko?" 

"Comin'," I answer, grabbing my gear pack. I follow him and Bruce and the other five going into the big pipe we've been working on this last week, wondering how much of what we've accomplished is going to have to be redone as a result of the collapse, and how much new damage is going to need attention. 

The tunnel's a long one, and all the way I'm listening above the shuffling of our heavy boots and the rub of plastic gear for the whine or hiss of escaping gas. Leaks... just one of the dangers so emphasized in training. There'd been thirteen in my training class. Six had been scared out of making it to actual duty. 

For half a minute my mind paints the dark scene into an urgent comic book image, wandering over the lines of Raphael's arms, bulged with tension and beading sweat as he breathes just under his panic, blocking the hissing gas line with one palm and knocking a frantic code on the pipe wall to his brothers. "Hear me. Come on, guys. Hear me! " 

"What's that, Silko?" 

"Huh? Nothing. Just listening for gas." I blush. Kevin, whose butt I've been following as we crawl, glances back with disgust and spits on the floor of the tunnel. If I'm careful... The beam of my headlamp warns me where not to place my gloved hand as I crawl past the spot a moment later. I grin; a small triumph. 

Graffiti blares images around the edges of my teams' backsides. How do they get all the way down here? I wonder for the millionth time. I wonder, too, if I'll ever glimpse tunnel art that's undeniably by a Turtle's hand. 

Dammit Meg - stay focused! In A.C. Farley's comic, Chet had managed to keep his job despite his haunted memory of dropping four baby turtles down into these sewers. But I'm sure not Chet, and this is no comic book. Here distraction means more than concerned shouts across a walkie-talkie. 

The site hasn't been badly disturbed - we spend the night shoring up a few weaker spots in the wall and go back to our expanding and replacing work, keeping the monitors going to alert us of any leaks. The worst thing that happens is Chuck getting some dirt stuck in his eye when he has his goggles off, trying to fix his contact lens. Jim gives him a warning and barks the rules at us against wearing contacts down here. 

We come out a little after four am. Still a couple hours til dawn, and it'll keep staying dark longer for the next few weeks. I stay underground til five, riding the trains, watching people, from businessmen to rough-looking kids, thinking about the ones who live down here. Another thing I don't tell my mom about doing. She wouldn't understand that I keep my wits about me and just make sure there's always people around, and a place to run. My uniform keeps most trouble away. Topside near Times Square, I come up with a small crowd into the colder air of the above-ground winds. I aim for the aging brownstone just up the street from the subway exit, its fifteen stories dwarfed amid the crowd of modern architechture. 

The front steps have only two sets of footprints in the dusting of snow, both leading inside, through the bullet-proof doors and into the pre-lobby space. "It's Meg," I say into the speaker there. A second later I grab the handle as it buzzes, and slide into the lobby. "Mornin', Tom. Gonna come watch the sunrise today?" 

"Ain't it still snowin out there?" 

"No... Looks like we just got a flurry or two since last evening." I shrug. "The clouds are gone now. And it shouldn't be too bad a commute." 

Tom squints his watery nightwatchman's gaze at me - there's something about him that always reminds me of a grandfather. "Clouds or no clouds, it's too cold for these shoulders." He rolls them carefully, showing off his natural percussion with their pops and cracks and snaps. "Don't freeze up there, girl. Couldn'tcha wait til summer?" 

I smile back and wave from the old copper-edged elevator doors. "I'll tell you all about it tomorrow morning." 

The old lift, stinking of dryer sheets and strong antiseptic, can only take me as high as the twelfth floor without a special key. I don't mind the extra hike. Stepping out, I round the elevator shaft and take the painted concrete stairs three and a half floors to the highest door. 

It leads out to the rooftop, nestled humbly among the skyscrapers near the Square, the black tarpaper broken by pipes and vents of all kinds. I walk to my perch, dusting a few brave flakes from the wooden box at the front corner of the old hotel, and sit down happily. The brickwork is lit by the towers and streetlights that helped earn Manhattan its reputation as the City That Never Sleeps, feeling proud to be part of that tradition. 

Leaning out over the eastern end of 44th Street, I can see the Avenue of the Americas with its Christmas-wreathed streetlights to my left, already the traffic there is becoming a steady stream. This afternoon I'll head north along that street toward Central Park, jogging past the back side of Rockefeller Center, and go food shopping along Second Ave north of the Queensboro. For now, I just lean my back against the cold bricks of the corner and watch the spires of St. Augustine's Church beyond the far side of the roof. Its bells wake any tenants still asleep in the apartments every morning at nine a.m. Pretty soon, above the spires, the sunrise will edge the shadowed corners of the towers with pastel brilliancy, and slowly warm the City. 

It isn't the best view of dawn - I like watching it through the magesty of St. Patrick's Cathedral from the Atlas Statue at Rockefeller, or from the dramatically medieval ledge of Belvedere Castle in Central Park, too - but neither place is nearly as safe as this roof, and can't match the feeling here of being home. 

On this roof, especially when Tom doesn't come up with me, I find it easiest to picture the Turtles nearby. Raph comes to mind first this morning... Raph's stayed out again, long after his brothers sought the refuge of the dark tunnels, brooding over his City like a Romantic gargoyle. No one sees him. He moves like a shadow, a wraith, and they're never quite quick enough to notice the shape of him leaving his mark on the world - when he bothers to leave one. A sketch of a rose on some bricks here, a girl rescued from thugs in a stinking alley there... Is this a just world? 

I leave Raph to his ponderings pretty quickly, though - he always gets too heavy without some action to liven up the scene. Leo, on the other hand... I half-close my eyes and imagine him calling the dawn with his dance, the way the best stories describe him in training. He moves across the tarpaper of the rooftop, the fluid intensity of his thousand-tempered twin blades flashing reflections of the sky through his concentration. Leo drives himself like a fast car, cruising the flow and circle and energy of his katas with unforgiving passion to his most efficient, beautiful, sweaty perfection. I can admire that, I can pity him for his struggle to vanquish emotion with motion. I know he'd hate being pitied. 

I think about sharing the view with Don or Mike, what I would say - I think I'd point out how the steam is rising so white it's painful to look at now, in its tendrils against the brightening sky. Don rests his chin on the tip of his bo, telling his brothers about the countless pipe-vents the steam escapes from, what the steam is for, how it gets there, what happens when it vanishes into the thin winter air. As for Mike, I don't see him sitting still for the sunrise or his brother's talking, he's always so full of energy. For my part, I'm too sore from work to do any goofing around, but... With a somersault Mike vaulted himself upside down and started parading around on his hands. His brothers ignored him while he pretended to fall off the edge every few minutes, or leaped back and forth between the roof and the church's pigeon-crowded spires. I've tried to picture Mike sitting still like I can with the others, but I only see it if he has a video game in his hands, or he's scribbling 

in a notebook, or zoning in front of the TV. Not outside in the open air. Not with anyone to show off in front of. Mike's someone to run with, dance or cook or make a scene with. 

After awhile I can see the top edge of the sun through two of the distant skyscrapers. It's only a sliver of the whole sun, a thin rectangle that reflects between the glass. It makes me miss the view of the Valley I'd had from my college dorm room. Up there you could see the whole sky. Dave had lived next door, then... But, and at this I grin, he never woke up in time to watch sunrises. 

When the lower edge of the sliver appears, I get up and stamp my numb feet, dust off the butt of my overalls, and head back downstairs to my apartment. 


	3. Waiting for Leonardo Chapter 2

**Waiting for Leonardo -- Chapter 2**   
story © 1999 Ria-angelo 

* * *

**December 18th, 2002  
4:37pm**

Dave drops his suitcase next to my miniature Christmas tree and groans. "You paid $30,000 a year at school to end up with this?" 

"No, I paid $5,000 after financial aid every year to eventually have a penthouse overlooking Central Park, and a summer home in the Colorado Rockies, and a weekend getaway bungalow on the California coast. This is the first step. You like it?" 

He grins. "It's cozy." I take his coat and let him wander around while I putter. He follows the walls of the narrow living room, admiring the thirty or so posters and clippings and photos I've taped over stains in the paper, then bends down to examine the shelves I've filled with my music and rocks and figurines and some of my favorite books. After watching him for a minute, I climb over the back of the couch and point out the stone with the Celtic cross painted on its surface. 

"This one's from Ireland, sophomore year." 

"Ohhmm?" 

"And remember this?" I grin and hold up a corked bottle three-quarters full of brackish green water. Tiny pebbles stir in its bottom. "Some of it's evaporated, but - " 

"Australia!! I got you that from Australia!" 

"_Your_ sophomore year." 

Dave winks and gives me his best Aussie accent. "Welladay, Maiss Meg, hahd ta breng ye back a bit o' tha Land Doon Undah, ay?" 

I frown. "You promised me a wallaby." 

"It wouldn't fit in my carry-on." 

"Want some iced tea?" I ask, bouncing up. 

"Sure, that'd be great, Meg," he says, going over to the TV. "Hey, was this you and Liz's VCR?" 

"The very same. By the way, I don't have iced tea," I tell him with a wink from the doorway. "How 'bout some grape juice?" 

Dave turns, very slowly,and flips his light mop of hair off his face to squint at me. "You don't have grape juice either, do you…" 

"Awww, you're too quick." 

We end up with chilled Gatorades, which is all I really DO have in the fridge. We sit in the middle of the floor of my 'bedroom', staring at everything I've jampacked into the 12'x14' space over the last year and a half. All my books and comics occupy the cinderblock and plastic shelves I've covered the back wall with. They help muffle any sounds from the next apartment. My one window, recessed into the brick wall, faces the church, just at the gutter of its roof. I'd already shown Dave how to perch on the 'windowseat' so the cardboard wouldn't collapse, so he could see the steam pipes of what I called "Comic Book Alley" below. "Very nice," he'd pronounced. "Dizzying, but nice." I've always liked it cause it looks like a giant poster of the Mirage Turtles in an alleyway that I used to keep over my bed at school. 

I'm twenty-three now, but there's a corner still dominated by old stuffed animals and various toys collected since childhood. The rest of the room is a blaze of colors and images from posters, track awards, dreamcatchers, magazine cutouts, framed art and photos, Christmas lights, and random pieces of eye-catching fabrics. I love bringing friends here, hearing their reactions. The floor's a chaos of notebooks, art supplies, and computer equipment, all centered around the laptop on a milk crate by the bookshelves. 

"Meg," Dave ventures finally, "This is boggling." 

"That's why I sleep on the couch in the living room." 

"How much writing do you actually get done in here?" 

I sigh thoughtfully, pretending to count on my fingers. "Enough to earn seventeen rejection slips a month?" 

"C'mon, not that many!" 

"Oh, all right, only twelve... I'm slipping! Three of my poems from freshman year got accepted for this anthology down at NYU two months ago. We'll see if they're gonna be used or not this summer. If not, I'll finally get my average up to thirteen." 

"Well, good luck." Dave gives me one of his twinkling half-grins. "So, what do you say we go get some dinner? Know any good spots yet?" 

"I know this incredible place in the Village where all the chairs and lights and dinnerware are mismatched antiques, and the walls are a 'menagerie of mirrors'." 

"Let's do it. Maybe we'll see some Turtles on the way." 

I swat him. 

**December 19th, 2002  
8:59am**

Dave is as hard to wake up as ever. 

"Dave. It's me. Just warning you, there's gonna be some noise in here in a minute." 

"Oh, okay, Meg," he says, half-sitting up and squinting at me in the slant of half-light that's filtered through to the air mattress on my bedroom floor. He flops back down, then, and is asleep about three seconds later. I shake my head and sit back, not bothering to take off my uniform yet. 

"You haven't lost your touch," I whisper, thinking of the many times I'd gone in to wake him for our morning Native American History class, junior year. 

Last night had been great - dinner was fantastic, and we got to do some fun shopping before meeting my friends Sarah and James outside the _Miss Saigon _ show on Broadway. And what a show! The flashback scene with the helicopter taking off, lifting the American soldiers away from a war-torn city and the desperate women and children tearing at the fence between them and safety, had me in shocky tears for half an hour... We'd hit a few dance clubs, enjoying the lights of Manhattan at night, before heading back and crashing around two. 

The first resounding peal of the bells crashes through the room, jolting Dave up in a frantic grab for cover. "What the hell!?!!" 

"It's the bells next door," I manage to tell him from the floor, kicking with laughter. "You look SO --- " 

That's as far as I get before he gives me a faceful of pillow. 

**9:28am**

Starbucks is a classy coffee shop usually more expensive than I can afford, but it's close to my street and Dave's offered to pay, anyway. 

I'm reciting their names like a grocery list as Dave chats. He's distracting me, talking about the lighting and tech work at _Miss Saigon_. I half appreciate it. 

I run through the list again, matching name to personality and choosing the one I need most at this moment. Not steady old Don, not smooth Leo - both too mellow and I need some fire to keep me awake for the rest of today. Not Raph, he's grouchy when he's tired. 

_Mike, then. Perkiness and happy colors, like morning donuts. _

Sipping my hot chocolate, I imagine Mike beside me, sprawling in the tiny Starbucks stool, listening to me mentally rattle off ideas of stuff to take Dave to see and do. I think he'd say to let it be, let things flow, that a good ninja knows when to plan out everything and when to give the City the reins. 

Sounds like a good plan to me. 

**8:37pm**

We have sushi in Chinatown, our shopping bags filling the other seats at the table. It's not the best kappa maki in town...I know a real Japanese place uptown that does much better, but we'd ended up in the snowy, crowded warrens of Chinatown's five-story brownstones all afternoon and it's easier to stay. I'm willing to compromise for it with loose rice rolls and pasty ginger. We wander some more, talking about college times, like the night eight of us stormed the library with waterguns and crazy outfits. 

We're laughing about one of the campus radio shows he deejayed, and I feel my pulse start to race. I look and look and look as we walk and I break out in a sweat of excitement. 

_Damn._ "Dave?" 

I point. 

"Wow. Kinda creepy, isn't it?" he asks me, turning for a better view. He sees it, too. I'm so relieved - _I'm not being crazy!_ - I could hug him. I find my voice. 

"Yeah," I say. "Creepy. I'm almost waiting for the snowballs..." 

It's impossible, but we're walking past a board fence, with flapping posters and graffiti, and beyond it is the thirty-foot deep pit of a construction site, right on the edge of Chinatown. I don't know how many times Eastman and Laird had visited Manhattan before they drew the Leonardo Micro-Series book back in '86, but this is a dead-ringer for that scene, and all of a sudden I'm scared. 

Dave's strayed away from the fence, probably remembering the Foot that popped up and pinned Leo's arms with their chains, before dragging him down to the muddy pit where Shredder nearly killed him. But I can't do that. It's like fate or something, my stomach's going into heavy aerobics as I press up against the fence, peering between the planks like I'm at a zoo. 

I'm not sure what I'm looking for, but I'm disappointed. 

_There's gotta be a million construction sites like this one in the world. And none of them are gonna be in the middle of enacting a Turtle comic, Meg. _

"We should talk Golden Harvest into coming down here," Dave's saying. "We'd save them a fortune in building a set." 

He's so close to what I'm thinking I shiver. "Nah... Hollywood could never do a movie as good as the first Mirage stories." 

He shrugs. "You're right. Eastman should see this though, he'd get a kick out of this place." 

"I dunno about that..." I whisper, forcing myself away, to keep moving with him. 

"What?" 

"He gave up on the book, Dave. Him and Peter finally bailed. It's all old business now. Why would they care about seeing a place like this? It would just bring back bad memories of giving up on their dreams." 

We argue for a block about creators and rights and whether it's possible to stick with a dream for all of your life when you never expected it to survive in the first place. Meanwhile, my mind's clicking a hundred miles an hour. _What if stories come true when you believe in them hard enough? What if that place got built because the stories have to someday become real? What if it's like the Neverending Story, or the fairies in Peter Pan, and all the people who believe in the Turtles made them live?_

I suddenly know where I'll be on Christmas Eve. 

**2am**

I sneak off the couch, leaving Dave snoring in my room, and head for the stairs. Tired as I am, I can't sleep - been working nights too long and there's so much to think about. From the roof, the taxis still cruising and the few people out walking look like tiny toys, moving very slowly. I wonder if they'll all make it home safe tonight. If they're famous or they die dramatically I might find out tomorrow, with the rest of the City, in the news. Meanwhile, they never look up or guess I'm watching, or care if I make it to work tomorrow after waving goodbye to Dave at the train station. 

There's nothing to do but go on with my life and hope that somehow, I'll have real meaning. 

"You're not missing anything," I tell Raph. "You always wanted to be human, to be able to be with other people and care and be cared for. But it's as hard for us to get to each other as it was for you. We just try to stay alive. Try to help out our friends as best we can. But for every friend there's a couple of million strangers out there that couldn't care less." 

He won't listen though. He'll be just as morose and frustrated the next time I pick up a comic or watch the first movie. Cause he can't change. 

That doesn't help me sleep any better. 

**December 21st, 2001  
10:58pm**

Her nametag says "Lori" and I don't know whether to be happy or jealous that she's here. The WFC project got finished last night and our new assignment is here, in her crew's territory under Greenwich Village. 

I do mean 'her crew'. She's thirty-something and a lot tougher than I am and working for her is amazing. Her guys trust her absolutely and she's already gained our team's respect. 

"All spratch back here, Silko?" 

"Yep." _What's spratch?_ I'm tightening a water pipe's joints, the wrench is bigger than my forearm. "Just another couple of links," I gasp. 

"Keep it up." She catches my eye and flashes me a grin, startling in the middle of her smudge-dark face. 

_Her own crew down here. She's been working for years and years to get to this point._ Part of me wants to be like her, wants to accomplish as much, prove myself that good. The rest is feeling my shoulder muscles twist in protest as I yank the wrench handle back another notch, reminding me I only took this as a temporary job - another year or two maybe, until my freelance stuff starts selling steady enough. 

**5am**

"I got the job back when my uncle got sick. He stayed with us, my dad had his hands full with me and my brothers already." 

"Brothers?" 

"Got three, how'd ya think I knew how to handle running my own crew? Eh?" 

We smile, take bites of our apple pies in the subway café. 

"I've always wanted to have brothers." 

"Ahh, they're a pain. You've got a crowd now, though." 

"Huh?" 

"All of 'em down there. We're your brothers. Learn that fast, Silko. It's the one place in this City where you let your guard down, trust something 'sides your own head." Lori taps her forehead, then mine. "Below, gotta make all your heads one. That's what keeps you alive. Get it?" 

I nod. Like going into battle, you don't fight alone, you fight as part of the team. Fight alone and you end up like Raph, razored and gasping and confessional in Return to New York before sending Leo to take on Saki one last time. 'We're your brothers' she'd said. I set those words in a back corner of my mind, to take out and look at a little later. 

"Thanks for having breakfast with me." 

"S'all right. Silko, that's the job, specially for us girls. Reachin' out. Givin' a hand back to the ones comin' on behind. Askin' for a hand of the ones ahead." 

"Did you have someone helping you, when you first came on?" 

"Sure, there's a few of the guys didn't mind a lady watchin' their backs downside. They were the ones who get it's family down there. There's us that are part of the circle, and that's for life. The rest, they take the job and work it til they get tired of it or get dead." 

"You're going to work the tunnels for life?" 

"Ahh, til I get too old for it. This work gets in the blood after awhile, guess I'll end up doin' street duty or settin' out assignments then. You?" 

"Me? Uh... I think I'd like to stay for a couple of years. Cause I want to be a writer, mostly." 

Lori throws back her head and laughs, startling the two businessmen at the next table. "Whyn'tcha say so, Silko? You coulda been tellin us stories all along. Brighten up the place. You start tellin' tomorrow. I'll guarantee an audience of one." 

"The crew might not like it much..." 

"We'll warm them up for it. Brothers, remember?" 

I wonder if Mike ever talked out his stories while working with his brothers. "I'll give it a try. Not sure what they'd want to hear though." 

"Christmas Eve's the day after, why not somethin' holiday-like?" 

I think it's a great idea. I spend my sunrise hour thinking how nice it is working with someone I don't have to look 'strong' for. 

**December 23rd, 2001  
1:14am**

"And in the long black stretch of sky, emptied of its power, they looked hard but couldn't see any stars." 

Henry strikes, shoves the wedge I'm holding a little deeper into the crack of rock. 

"There was only the sound of settling snow and their own hoarse breathing. Abby started shivering. 'I'm cold... Let's get out of here.' So they started back down the hill." 

"Little more to the left, Silk." 

He says it soft and quick, like he hates to interrupt. _He really is interested!_ "'Kay." 

"That's good." Slam. Henry's arms seem to burn orange as they swing again through the lamplight. 

"Just beyond the trees, a few hundred yards back from the road, they found a falling-down old barn, and she followed Jesse through the broken boards of the side into a pile of dusty, ancient hay... A little later and they were settled for sleep, some burlap to keep them warm as they curled in the hay, when they heard something." Andy's moved a little closer, holding the light for us. I raise my voice. "It sounded like a cat... Or the wind... No, there again. Abby sat up, to hear better. Again it rose and then she knew it, knew the sound and she had to move. 'Jesse! Jesse, that's a baby crying! A baby in here!'" 

Lori strides by with a box of tools. She winks. 


	4. Waiting for Leonardo Chapter 3

**Waiting for Leonardo -- Chapter 3**   
story © 1999 Ria-angelo 

* * *

**December 24th, 2001  
5:14pm**

Christmas Eve. No work today. I should be on a bus going to relatives, or doing last-minute shopping, or snuggled up on my couch in a blanket with tea and friends in front of "It's A Wonderful Life". 

I'm not. 

I'm wearing black, fitted-ankle running pants over my DPW long-underwear. I left the flourescent Gore-tex parka at home, and wear a black sweatshirt instead with the big white "USA" sewn on its front ripped out. Instead of boots I have my quietest pair of running shoes, covered in black permanent marker. I have black gloves. My hair's in a tight ponytail at the nape of my neck, tucked into the broad, fitted circle of black flannel that covers my nose, mouth, neck, ears. 

I don't know if I should laugh at myself or be scared. 

I feel like a kid behind a couch, waiting for Santa to arrive. God knows I passed enough excited kids and guys in Santa suits on the way down here. It made me wonder why I stopped believing in Santa Claus but I almost believe I'll see something in Chinatown tonight. 

_If you believe hard enough in something, you can make it happen._

That's what's said in fairy tales. And physics classes. And psychology journals. 

I'm hidden well. Hidden with plenty of time to think, and wonder how long it would take Foot ninja to find me if they really are real and gathering in this place tonight. What will I do, me and the black-taped broomstick bo my hand keeps wrapping around, if they _do_ arrive? Try to fight? _Very funny, Meg._ Run to warn Leo? They'd catch me at my first movement. 

Wait til the fight's over, tail them to April's? And then to the farmhouse? 

_What do you expect - a 'welcome home' party?_

I don't know. I only know I won't see anything at this site tonight. Nobody. No Turtles. No Foot. Maybe a watchman or two from the little shed at the other end. 

I only know I have to be here to make sure... 

**7:48pm**

It's gotten colder. My feet are numb, number than they've ever been on my rooftop, and I'm sure I'm insane. 

_What the heck do I think I'm doing out here?_

The construction site's been dead quiet, and the plywood planks I'm sitting on, whose makeshift walls surround me two stories above street level, are as dark and chilly as the tunnel we worked in last night. Even the lights of Chinatown reflecting from the low orange clouds don't brighten this makeshift room. I'm freezing myself on Christmas Eve, alone in the dark, high in the air, on a goose chase for dreams. 

I vow never to tell anyone about this night. I go back to thinking about the Christmas story I want to finish, the one I told the crew last night. 

Lori's invited me to Christmas dinner with her family. "Silk, if you got no plans you're welcome to be my family's storyteller this year. Keep the kids happy. Gramps died and it's not the same since, but you've got his gift. I'm making dumplings." 

"Thanks, Lori. I'd love to." 

I hope I don't have a cold. 

**10:36pm**

I've decided to wait it out til midnight. I'm sure the Turtles were on the road to Northampton by this time according to the comic book. I wonder if I'll be insane like this again, come Christmas of 2002. Will I wait for them again? 

_No...construction site'll be complete by then._

I'll wait it out in the cold for the rest of the evening though, as penance for being so dumb, motionless just in case I alert the watchman (or the Foot). And a midnight walk home at Christmas might be kinda neat in its own way - so long as I'm careful to stay to the lighted, busy traffic sections. 

At that thought, I consider spending all night. 

_Wouldn't want to run into trouble, like with that gang down there._

It takes me a minute to realize another one's coming too - or two halves of the same one, closing from either end of the street that I can see from my perch. Closing towards the fence. 

Someone yells. 

I can't see over the fence, but someone's behind it. Trapped between the two wings of the gang. 

I get tenser than I've ever been in my life, hoping it's Leo, hoping even more that it's not, and start rubbing sensation back into my feet. I have to get down there. 

Most of the gang closes and I can't see anything. I leave the plywood hide-out, any noise I make covered by harsh thudding sounds I know only from movies and nightmares. 

I have a broomstick bo. _Will it be enough to help?_ I reach the frozen mud of the ground and hear a cracking up the steep slope. 

The fence just got broken through. 

_This is a dream._

The guy that cartwheels down to ground level is followed by a flood of a dozen big Asian kids with sticks and I am in so far over my head there is nowhere I can turn. 

I realize the guy isn't Leo. 

_This is a nightmare._

He's black, as out of his territory here as I am, and he sees me at the foot of the planks and framework, outlined dimly by the orange reflecting snow. He's horrified, and then grim as he faces me with the gang at his back, and a silence falls as the rest see me, too. I don't speak. I have a girl's voice. They'll kill me if they guess. 

They'll kill me if I run. 

They'll kill this guy if I don't do something. 

_Heck's becks, we all die sometime anyway._

I raise the black broomstick and point to the bloody guy on his knees in the dirt. I jerk it, signal him to come. 

"Who the hell is _this_ mother?" 

I'm tall. The shirt is bulky. They might not guess I'm a crazy chick from uptown who's stuck herself smack in the middle of her own rattlebrained lunacy. I don't have time to wonder what a Turtle would do. I don't even have time to go through the grocery list and figure out which one is the best for this job. It's just me and fate now. 

The black guy stands and gets his fists up, waiting. He wants me to attack. I must look like the head of the gang to him or something. _Shredder._ I shake my head and point behind me, like I'm some impatient vigilante. He blinks. 

"Screw this, trash 'em both!!" 

There's a rush. So much for the bluff. 

The black guy bolts past me and I get five steps after him before the neck of my sweatshirt jerks back and chokes off my breath. 

_it's happened it's finally happened my luck's run out and I'm dead they're gonna destroy me and there's no one here to help oh where's a hero when you really need one ---_

I jerk the bo back and it must be a lucky shot cause I can breathe again. I dodge an arm coming for me and turn too much, go to my knees. _Dammit, Meg, twist an ankle like the bimbos in all the movies why don'tcha?_ Before I can stagger back up there's a boot in my side. It makes me gasp but I don't scream. I use it to get me on my feet. 

I'm surrounded now... Five of them? Seven? The rest are still after the black guy, I can hear them yelling. I can smell these guys' breath and my sweat. Their faces are dark in the shadows, thick, unforgiving. One of the gang, he's wearing a Yankees cap, rips the broomstick out of my hand. It clatters against the nearest beam. There's laughter. 

_I hope it's over quick. _

The floodlights and gunshots catch us by surprise. I grab the bo as we scatter, in case I get caught again. I run into the site, hearing the gang struggle up the muddy slope. An overweight guard is shouting, he has the black kid and four of the locals at gunpoint before me, one's on the ground cursing and bleeding. They haven't seen me yet... 

I use the shadows. 

Get to the street opposite the gang's. 

Find a fire escape. 

**11pm**

I'm on a rooftop in Chinatown on Christmas Eve a year and a half after college graduation. I'm a DPW worker...a writer...a crazy comic book fan... And I'm alive. My feet are still numb and I figure I'm an idiot for not calling a cab and going home right this instant, but I can't go back yet. 

I just look at the orange sky, waiting to feel something besides sorrow. 

"Leo... You were supposed to be there." 

I think about the lucky shot I got in with my excuse for a ninja weapon. I think about the timing of that security guard and how by all rights I should have been caught by cops hours ago for messing around at a fenced-off construction site. 

It would have been pretty hard to explain my outfit...not to mention why I was there... 

_Waiting for Santa Claus? No, officer. Waiting for Leonardo. He was here a few years ago, you see. No, not da Vinci. No, I wasn't playing vigilante. Those kids just happened to show up while I was waiting. I'm wearing black and carrying a weapon so I could avoid a gang, not fight them. _

Do I look like a vigilante to you? 

I flash a fake, big-eyed, innocent smile to the sky. 

I'm still waiting for Leo's answer. It's in my head or my heart already but I don't want to listen to it yet. 

Somewhere in the distance churchbells are ringing. _Midnight? Is it Christmas yet?_ I've been watching the stars, seen a few satellites, wondering if any kids out there are being told 'That's Rudolph's nose!' I want to call Dave or some other friend or my Mom and say "Merry Christmas! I'm alive!" 

There've been no fire trucks speeding to a blaze at a second-hand shop. No weird-looking guy wearing a canvas cloak, pursued by ninjas across the rooftops. At least, not that I've seen. I get to imagining the four of them sitting with me on the roof, waiting like I am, and I decide to indulge myself one last time. 

"I thought maybe, if I was in the right place at the right time, and wanted it bad enough..." 

_That we'd be there?_

"Yeah, Don. But it got screwed up. I could have gotten killed." 

_You didn't. That's the one rule on the street, Meg. Learned it yet?_

"Don't get killed... Raph, there's more to life than that. Why can't everything be like it is in the comics? A family that's always together, that works and lives and loves together and will fight to the death for each other. Enemies you can actually name. Adventures." 

_You're a writer, Meg,_ says Mike. I picture him leaning the bottom of his shell against a steam chimney's round cover, his legs stuck out together with the heels dug into the snow of the roof. _Writers make the adventures, give their readers enemies, make up ideals for people to live for. But writers gotta live in the really real world too._

"I try. I try for that balance. Every day. If I just try long enough - " 

_Then you'll create your own dreams. And live them out in the world you were born to. You don't need us to define that for you, that's making us a crutch._

Don takes over for Leo from there. _You've got gifts. You've got lives to touch with those gifts. Let us be a springboard, not a dragchain._

I nod. I think about how hard it was to leave for college after high school graduation, hours away from my hometown, how hard it was to make new friends and get a start on my own life and yet still hold on to the friends and family of my past. _It's gonna be just as hard to find that balance with my fanhood and my real-world life. But...maybe just as rewarding a challenge?_

I look out over the snows of the empty roof and wonder if the black kid made it home okay. 

_Hey... If I hadn't been up there waiting for Leonardo... That kid might be dead, or in a hospital right now. _

That sure doesn't mean I'm going to go out every night looking for Turtles in order to find people to rescue - that's a job for the pros - but suddenly I feel just a little bit more like the ninja hero I've always wanted to be. 

**December 25th, 2001  
6:37am**

Dawn. 

_Hell of a Christmas morning,_ I think, shaking the snow from my shoulders before going into the lobby of my building. 

I flip through my mail in the elevator, still smelling the cold air of the street in my hair, on my clothes. There's a big red card from Mom, reminding me of the years of Christmases past, my family, presents that meant so much. _ Better get in before Mom calls and gets worried. Then maybe I can get some real sleep before dinner at Lori's. _

It's with happy thoughts, thoughts of Christmas packages waiting under the little tree in my living room, thoughts of my friends, thoughts of Lori and the rest of her family, that I see the white envelope from Cattail Press in the handful of mail. One of my old TMNT pen pals works there now and suggested I submit some stuff, last fall. 

I walk down the hall, ripping it open, curious. 

_No way... No WAY!!!_

My submission's been accepted. I hold back for a second, decide to wake up the floor anyway. 

"COWABUNGA!!!" 

**END**

Thanks for reading!!! 


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